EclipseConverge Highlights: Gradle, JUnit 5, Enterprise Javascript

by Frederic Ebelshaeuser

Eclipse Converge is around the corner, and we have already started the countdown. I'll be attending Eclipse Converge and Devoxx US with three of my Yatta colleagues, and we are really excited about meeting our friends from the Eclipse community in San Jose. Plus, we look forward to lots of great talks on interesting topics. My personal highlights include:

Embracing JUnit 5 with Eclipse: a must for all those interested in writing great unit tests with Eclipse. After a successful crowdfunding campaign, the JUnit 5 team released milestone 3 just a few months ago, and the new major version of JUnit is expected to be generally available in Q3 this year, more than 10 years after JUnit 4 was released (!) After this long wait, I'm more than curious to see what JUnit 5 has in store, how it takes advantage of Java 8 features such as lambda expressions, and how Eclipse provides support for the next-gen testing framework.

Gradle and Eclipse - IDE as build artifact: There ís no doubt that Gradle is becoming more and more popular as a build tool in the Eclipse community, not least because Gradle tooling for the Eclipse IDE is provided by the Eclipse project Buildship. If you want to get started with Gradle and Eclipse, it's not only important to weigh the pros and cons of Gradle vs. Maven, but also to know the tools and best practices you need.

Enterprise JavaScript... what the heck?! - With Eclipse projects such as Orion, Flux, and Che on the rise, Cloud-IDEs are beyond the experimental stage. Eclipse Dirigible is another interesting Cloud development project. The initial code was provided by SAP. It now offers a set of APIs that introduces standards for JavaScript for database access, HTTP client usage, multi-threading, WebSocket and more.

If youíre interested in Cloud development, you might also want to check out these two talks on Eclipse Che:

Needless to say, my colleagues and I are thrilled about the opportunity to meet up with fellow Eclipse enthusiasts at such a beautiful and significant location in the heart of the Silicon Valley. I look forward to many interesting discussions and inspiring talks on JUnit, Gradle, Cloud development and other hot topics at Eclipse Converge!